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Immigration

“I think it’s easy for people like you and me who wear suits and ties and work in offices to cast aspersions on those with a tenth-grade education . . . But let’s talk about some of these folks with a tenth-grade education . . . I have had the opportunity to meet over the years many farmworkers who have had families die under brutal conditions in the heat so that you or I can have less expensive orange juice, cheaper artichokes, or less expensive garlic . . . and I just want to suggest that these people have given far more to American society than you or I ever will.” - Congressman Ted W. Lieu

Immigration lawyers and university staff discussed the impact of President Donald Trump’s decision to end a program that deferred deportationfor thousands of undocumented individuals at a panel Thursday.

On Tuesday, Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program enacted by former President Barack Obama in 2012 that deferred deportations for undocumented individuals brought to the United States as children. The program helped thousands of undocumented individuals receive work permits, open bank accounts and obtain driver’s licenses in certain states.

The Trump administration’s decision Tuesday to punt the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to Congress prompted strong criticism from South Bay elected officials to the immigration policy change that could affect tens of thousands of Californians.

Protests are expected to continue Monday in downtown Los Angeles amid reports President Trump plans to end support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, with a six-month delay to allow Congress to come up with an alternative.

The program, known as DACA and introduced by former President Barack Obama in 2012, allows people who were brought into the United States illegally as children to work and study in the country without fear of being deported.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif). is firing back at White House policy aide Stephen Miller’s comments on immigration, calling them "unAmerican."

“The unAmerican remarks by Stephen Miller on the Statue of Liberty suggests that when he says Make America Great Again, he means the 1800s,” Lieu tweeted late Wednesday.

Miller at a White House briefing earlier Wednesday defended an immigration plan backed by President Trump that would limit immigration. The measure would favor a “merit-based” immigration system over the current priority given to those with family ties to the U.S.